House Speaker
By Kemo Cham
Liberian security officials on Wednesday arrested the country’s Speaker of parliament over corruption allegations.
The formerly powerful Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alex Tyla, was arrested alongside an equally powerful politician in the person of Varney Sherman, who is the chairman of the governing Unity Party of President Ellen Johson-Sirleaf, over a high profile bribery and corruption scandal involving a string of senior government officials.
The two men were fingered on allegation of bribery and corruption relating to a damning report by the campaign group Global Witness. They were among several senior Liberian government officials accused of demanding or receiving bribe or suspicious payments from a prospecting mining company.
The Special Presidential Taskforce set up by President Sirleaf to probe people linked to the saga is handling the case.
Global Witness is an international NGO based in London, UK, and Washington, US, which works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide.
Over US$950, 000 in bribes and other suspicious payments were made by the UK mining firm Sable Mining and Mr Sherman, who serves as a lawyer to the company, to top Liberian officials, the Global Witness findings released May 11 showed.
The government, at the time, vowed to investigate and hold those found culpable to account.
The report, titled: The Deceivers, revealed how in 2010 Sable Mining hired Mr Sherman, who is considered Liberia’s best-connected lawyer and is also Senator of Grand Cape Mount County, in an effort to secure one of the country’s last large mining assets, the Wologizi iron ore concession situated in the northern part of the country.
The report alleged that Sherman advised Sable that in order to obtain the contract it must first get Liberia’s concessions law changed and that he could get that done by bribing senior officials.
Tyler allegedly received $75, 000 as “consulting fees”. Others who received payments include Richard Tolbert, chairman of the National Investment Committee [$50, 000], Morris Saytumah, minister of state for finance, economic and legal affairs, now a senator [$50,000], Willie Belleh, chairman of public procurement and concessions commission [$10,000].
Global witness backed up the revelations in its report with copies of leaked emails and company documents.
The action by the Liberian authorities on Wednesday has been hailed as a brave step. But some have questioned the motive, especially in light of the fact that one of the accused, Speaker Tyla, is a presidential hopeful. He recently ditched President Sirleaf’s party for the smaller LPDP for which he is expected to run for President in the general elections slated for 2017.
Also, President Sirleaf’s son, Fumba Sirleaf, is among the people named as having received ‘suspicious’ payments from Sable, yet he hasn’t been arrested.
(C) Politico 26/05/16
